The 10 Worst Corporations of 2002

From Arms Trade to Slave Labor

By Russell Mokhiber & Robert Weissman

2002 will forever be remembered as the year of corporate crime,
the year even President George Bush embraced the notion of "corporate
responsibility."

While the Bush White House has now downgraded its "corporate
responsibility portal" to a mere link to uninspiring content on the
White House webpage, and although the prospect of war has largely
bumped the issue off the front pages, the cascade of corporate
financial and accounting scandals continues.

We easily could have filled Multinational Monitor's list of the
10 Worst Corporations of the Year with some of the dozens of
companies embroiled in the financial scandals.

But we decided against that course.

As extraordinary as the financial misconduct has been, we didn't
want to contribute to the perception that corporate wrongdoing in
2002 was limited to the financial misdeeds arena.

For Multinational Monitor's 10 Worst Corporations of 2002 list,
we included only Andersen from the ranks of the financial criminals
and miscreants. Andersen's assembly-line document destruction
certainly merits a place on the list. (Citigroup appears on the list
as well, but primarily for a subsidiary's involvement in predatory
lending, as well as the company's funding of environmentally
destructive projects around the world.)

As for the rest, we present a collection of polluters, dangerous
pill peddlers, modern-day mercenaries, enablers of human rights
abuses, merchants of death, and beneficiaries of rural destruction
and misery.

Arthur Andersen, for a massive scheme to destroy documents
related to the Enron meltdown. "Tons of paper relating to the Enron
audit were promptly shredded as part of the orchestrated document
destruction," a federal indictment against Andersen alleged. "The
shredder at the Andersen office at the Enron building was used
virtually constantly and, to handle the overload, dozens of large
trunks filled with Enron documents were sent to Andersen's main
Houston office to be shredded." Andersen was convicted for illegal
document destruction, effectively putting the company out of
business.

BAT, for operating worldwide programs supposedly designed to
prevent youth smoking but which actually make the practice more
attractive to kids (by suggesting smoking is an adult activity),
continuing to deny the harmful health effects of second-hand smoke,
and working to oppose efforts at the World Health Organization to
adopt a strong Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.

Caterpillar, for selling bulldozers to the Israeli Defense Forces
(IDF), which are used as an instrument of war to destroy Palestinian
homes and buildings. The IDF has destroyed more than 7,000
Palestinian homes since the beginning of the Israeli occupation in
1967, leaving 30,000 people homeless.

Citigroup, both for its deep involvement in the Enron and other
financial scandals and its predatory lending practices through its
recently acquired subsidiary, The Associates. Citigroup paid $215
million to resolve Federal Trade Commission (FTC) charges that The
Associates engaged in systematic and widespread deceptive and abusive
lending practices.

DynCorp, a controversial private firm which subcontracts military
services with the Defense Department, for flying planes that spray
herbicides on coca crops in Colombia. Farmers on the ground allege
that the herbicides are killing their legal crops, and exposing them
to dangerous toxins.

M&M/Mars, for responding tepidly to revelations about child
slaves in the West African fields where much of the world's cocoa is
grown, and refusing to commit to purchase a modest 5% of its product
from Fair Trade providers.

Procter & Gamble, the maker of Folger's coffee and part of
the coffee roaster oligopoly, for failing to take action to address
plummeting coffee bean prices. Low prices have pushed tens of
thousands of farmers in Central America, Ethiopia, Uganda and
elsewhere to the edge of survival, or destroyed their means of
livelihood altogether.

Schering Plough, for a series of scandals, most prominently
allegation of repeated failure over recent years to fix problems in
manufacturing dozens of drugs at four of its facilities in New Jersey
and Puerto Rico. Schering paid $500 million to settle the case with
the Food and Drug Administration.

Shell Oil, for continuing business as usual as one of the world's
leading environmental violators -- while marketing itself as a
socially and environmentally responsible company.

Wyeth, for using duplicitous means, and without sufficient
scientific proof, to market hormone replacement therapy (HRT) to
women as a fountain of youth. Scientific evidence reported in 2002
showed that long-term HRT actually threatens women's lives, by
increasing the risks of breast cancer, heart attack, stroke and
pulmonary embolism.

What's the lesson to draw from this year's 10 worst list? Not
only are Enron, WorldCom, Adelphia, Tyco and the rest indicative of a
fundamentally corrupt financial system, they are representative of a
rotten system of corporate dominance.

The full 10 Worst Corporations of 2002 list is available at
www.multinationalmonitor.org.

Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Corporate Crime Reporter
(contact 202-737-1680 or russell@nationalpress.com). Robert Weissman
is editor of the Multinational Monitor (www.multinationalmonitor.org,
202-387-8030 or rob@essential.org). See their website,
www.corporatepredators.org.